


The Prisoner

by Evander1



Series: Between-Scenes with Ralph [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Imprisonment, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 22:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30012039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evander1/pseuds/Evander1
Summary: They took him prisoner two days and six hours after Kara and the little girl had left.
Relationships: Kara & Ralph (Detroit: Become Human), Ralph & Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human)
Series: Between-Scenes with Ralph [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211498
Kudos: 4





	The Prisoner

**Author's Note:**

> Is this third person or first person? Even I'm not sure, (but, the sudden shift to "we" in one sentence is intentional).

They took Ralph prisoner.

They took him prisoner two days and six hours after Kara and the little girl left.

Ralph wished Kara and the little girl had stayed for longer.

He imagined them staying for longer. He imagined them sleeping by the fireplace again, and becoming friends with Ralph, because that would have happened if they had stayed for longer, and letting him enter stasis next to them like they did next to each other. Kara kept her arms draped over the little girl in an embrace while they slept, and maybe someday Ralph could be part of that pile of love. Was that what families did? He did not know if it was what human families did, but androids could.

He imagined this in the days that he was prisoner. They had imprisoned him in a huge dark building with hundreds of other androids all in the same space, and Ralph could not make friends with them because Kara and the little girl were his friends now, not anybody else, and there were too many other androids, too many moving around and making noise, but at least it was dark, so he could curl in a corner, and there was too much noise even to trace RA9 on the ground or wall and he did not have his knife and the only thing he could do was hold his hands over his ears, and Ralph was alone again, so he would think about Kara and the little girl and remember every image of them, every remembered sound and smell, and moment, even the bad ones where he had scared them, and he could imagine what it would be like if they had stayed for longer, and if they had stayed for longer the humans would not have taken Ralph prisoner because he would have loved Kara and her little girl too much and that would have made everything all right and allowed him to keep the humans far away, and he huddled into a tighter ball in the corner and pressed his hands tighter over his ears.

He knew her name, Alice, because he heard Kara address her by it before they left, but Kara had never said “Alice” when talking to him, so he did not think he was allowed to use it.

During the two days and six hours between Kara and the little girl leaving, he carved into the walls, and he did it for longer stretches of time than he had ever done before, and he thought about them in a vague way the whole time he did it, but he deliberately refrained from recalling the specific moments and memories because that would hurt too much and it was time to return to normal.

But as a prisoner, he began remembering every last detail and diving deep into every memory over and over again because now he knew that there would be no more normal.

When they captured him at his house they stripped him of his clothes and left those behind, and he needed the protection of his cloak over his shoulders. In the dark huge building some of the androids had their uniforms he could see even in the darkness, and a much smaller number had human clothes and some were naked like him, and he did not know the difference, maybe it was by the whim of whichever humans had taken whoever prisoner, because if there was one thing that he knew about humans other than that they were bad, it was that they were arbitrary and unpredictable.

He did not know what the humans had planned for him. Maybe they were going to return him to the park or farm, or use him to work someplace else. Maybe they were just going to torture and torment him again. Maybe they were going to punish him for his crimes. But why would they have so many other androids prisoner too, and all in the same place? Not working, just there, just prisoners, all of them, for the sake of imprisonment itself, it seemed. None of the explanations he could think of for himself, explained that.

At some points he would have thoughts like these, wondering, speculating, at other times, he would think nothing, only feel, at other times the memory of Kara and her little girl dominated, and he stayed in the little ball that was his own body, sometimes stretching out a finger to trace RA9, other times attempting to block out the sounds, the overwhelming sounds and movements and chaos of the crowd all around.

Little girl, Kara, little girl, Kara.

We could curl in a ball together. Ralph cannot uncurl anymore. He cannot join them in lying together, embracing, by the fire. But maybe they will love Ralph enough that Kara will come and put her arm around the ball that is Ralph, and the little girl too, even though the little girl needs a father and Ralph cannot be a good father if he is curled but he cannot uncurl and maybe the little girl will understand and stay close to Ralph anyway and know that he has a father’s heart for her even if he cannot uncurl. A little girl near to Ralph. The little girl, Alice. Ralph is not allowed to say her name because Kara did not say so.

The female MC500 (paramedic services for humans, professional) stood up from the crouch in which she’d been massaging the back of and trying to get some sort of response from the trembling WR600 (commercial, gardening or green space maintenance, commercial).

“It’s very sad. He’s not responding to anything.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the male AP700 (household and family assistance,domestic, our newest, most advanced all purpose model yet, get yours today) said somberly. “We’ll soon all be dead anyway.”

Which was true, as it was the next day that the humans moved them to the recycling camps.


End file.
